Settlement includes requirement that GSU union inform 3,000+ students of their right to refrain from paying for radical union political activities
Boston, MA (August 21, 2024) – Several Jewish graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have prevailed in their legal cases to cut off financial support to the MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU), an affiliate of the United Electrical (UE) union. The students, all of whom received free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, objected to GSU union officials’ anti-Israel activities, particularly their support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Because Massachusetts lacks Right to Work protections that make union membership and financial support voluntary, union officials at unionized private colleges like MIT can force graduate students to financially support a union under threat of losing their academic positions and work. However, this power is subject to limitations under federal anti-discrimination law and some Supreme Court decisions.
Foundation staff attorneys litigated federal charges at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in March for William Sussman, Joshua Fried, Akiva Gordon, Adina Bechhofer, and Tamar Kadosh Zhitomirsky, each of which stated that the union had demanded full dues payments even after they had each stated their religious objection to funding the union and asked for an accommodation as per Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Such accommodations vary, but often take the form of letting the objector divert the dues from the offensive union to a 501(c)(3) charity instead.
Shortly after those filings, Foundation staff attorneys also filed federal unfair labor practice charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for Katerina Boukin, who objected on political grounds to the GSU’s ideological activity and sought to exercise her rights under the Foundation-won Communications Workers of America v. Beck Supreme Court decision. In Beck, the Court ruled that union officials cannot force those who opt out of formal union membership (like Boukin) to pay dues or fees for union expenses not directly related to collective bargaining, even in a non-Right to Work state. GSU bosses denied Boukin’s Beck request on the specious grounds that she had missed a short union-concocted “window period” in which such an objection would be accepted.
Settlement Blocks Union Bosses from Using Student Money to Support Extremism
The students have now won a favorable NLRB settlement, and a favorable outcome of the EEOC charges, that fully vindicate their rights. The students who voiced religious objections (Sussman, Fried, Gordon, Bechhofer, and Zhitomirsky) have obtained accommodations under which they will pay no money to the union and will instead pay money to charities of their choice, despite initial pushback from union bosses. The charities include American Friends of Magen David Adom and American Friends of Leket.
Foundation attorneys scored for Katerina Boukin a settlement that will require GSU bosses to inform the entire MIT graduate student body of their rights to invoke the Beck decision. GSU bosses must declare by email that they will not restrict the ability of those who resign their union memberships to cut off dues payments for political expenses and pay a reduced amount to the union. This email notice will go out to approximately 3,000 MIT students.
The Jewish students’ efforts to assert their rights put on display the radicalism of GSU union officials. The students who asserted religious objections to supporting the union initially received form letters as responses to their requests, which callously claimed that “no principles, teachings or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees to a labor union” and that no religious conflict existed because the founder of GSU’s parent union was himself Jewish. Through the Foundation-backed litigation, the students’ religious objections to supporting GSU were accommodated.
MIT Students Expose GSU Misdeeds to Congress & Nation
Both Will Sussman and Katerina Boukin publicly commented on how the GSU union’s public image was synonymous with political extremism and had little to do with academics. Boukin stated that she was deeply offended by the union’s “opposition to Israel and promotion of Leninist-Marxist global revolution” and that “[t]he GSU’s political agenda has nothing to do with my research as a graduate student at MIT, or the relationships I have with my professors and the university administration, yet outrageously they demand I fund their radical ideology.”
In July, Will Sussman appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce to reveal even more details about his and his colleagues’ distressing experience with the GSU union. As Sussman testified, after the October 7 attacks on Israel, GSU union representatives voiced support for Hamas’ bloody “rebellion” and the GSU Vice President was even arrested for her behavior at an anti-Israel protest. “She was banned from campus but remains on [dues-funded] paid ‘union leave,’” Sussman stated.
“The Foundation-backed MIT graduate students who fought these legal battles have earned well-deserved victories. But defending basic free association rights shouldn’t require such lengthy litigation, and meaningful reforms are necessary to ensure union support is truly voluntary,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Forcing GSU union officials to abandon their blatantly discriminatory dues practices is only the tip of the iceberg: Because Massachusetts lacks Right to Work protections, GSU still has the power to force the vast majority of MIT graduate students to subsidize some portion of their activities.
“Foundation attorneys are continuing to provide legal aid for all those who challenge the imposition of radical union agendas at places such as the University of Chicago, Dartmouth, and Johns Hopkins, and they are doing so for adherents of both Judaism and Christianity. But this ordeal at MIT should remind lawmakers that all Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” Mix added.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
